


Shortly, Sweetly, Mine.

by ermengarde



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: 3 Sentence Fiction, Ficlet, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-18 04:21:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28860981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ermengarde/pseuds/ermengarde
Summary: 16 3-sentence stories to fill theWrite Short and SweetJanuary Bingo Card.Prompts are the title for each wee ficlet.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4
Collections: Write short and sweet





	Shortly, Sweetly, Mine.

**Lullaby** 130 words, Mikey (/Kristen), 02/01/2021  
Mikey's not the singer in the family, not at all, but it doesn't mean that he can't hold a tune - he just doesn't want to hold the limelight. Here, though, in the soft dark of his babies' bedroom, there isn't really any limelight, there's just him, his little girls, and the easiest thing in the world he can do to get them to sleep. Kristen does the reading, all the voices and the education and the introduction to new worlds (although, when they're older, Mikey's totally in charge of their education in comics) but Mikey gets to do the soothing and the half remembered words that Elena used to sing and here, in _this_ part of his family, he is the singer and the limelight belongs to his babies.

**Dance** 89 words, Gerard & Frank, 03/01/2021   
Frank spins around the stage in a way that makes Gerard think of ferns unfurling, or those chaos-patterned shirts from the 90s. He's rooted at his mic, always returning there to sing (unless he's pushing into Ray's or Gerard's own microphone), but Gerard thinks that if you traced his movement you would see his unspooling into whatever space he can find. Gerard can see it in his head, bright glowing lines, laid over and over throughout their set, showing how Frank's movement binds them all organically, messily, uniquely together.

**Sound of Silence** 138 words, Mikey, 04/01/2021   
The new studio is incredible, the insulation's so thick, makes everything so quiet, that in his darker moments Mikey thinks that he could have been transported to the moon and not have noticed a thing. He tells Gerard, because Gerard's never judged the tangents Mikey's brain goes on, and he thinks that Gee might get a kick out of their studio being a lunar transport module. Gerard does get a kick out of it, draws a little cut-away of the studio with big rockets underneath it like Apollo, but when he's drawing, the thinks, and before he leaves Mikey alone to get on with tracking his baseline in the heavy silence of the studio, he puts his hand flat on the floor and says that they'd be able to feel take off, even if they couldn't hear it.

**Song Contest** 144 Words, Gerard 05/01/21   
The first time they see the Eurovision Song Contest, they're in Finland and Gerard wonders if he's high enough that he's made up this bright, loud, joyous spectacle where the presenters occasionally speak English. He decides that even though he is, you know, known for his creativity that there's no way that he would have invented anything so bizarrely, inexplicably, awesome (also Ray mentions watching it, so it must have been an actual thing). Gerard investigates it, or asks people about it anyway, and discovers that it's this annual thing that everyone in Europe (and lately, Australia) is _obsessed_ with and that, while no one expects him - am American - to understand it, everyone is very happy to enthuse about it with him, and to help him organize an annual watch party - and to help him source the ingredients for the recipes on MissionEurovision.

**Soothing Music** 78 words Mikey & Frank, 06/01/2021  
Frank's idea of soothing music, Mikey thinks, is not the same as everyone else's. Mikey can appreciate uniqueness - Mikey is not entirely _normal_ himself, and Gerard is absolutely a paragon of individualism but it can make for some seriously unrestful times in their apartment. Mikey lifts his noise-cancelling headphone off of his ear and confirms that the screaming, thudding base is still going strong and sighs, he'll give Frankie another hour and then he'll suggest a movie.

**Opera** 134 words Gerard, 07/01/2021  
Occasionally someone - a record label person, a journalist, a fan, _Mom_ \- will ask Gerard when he's going to write the My Chem opera. People just don't understand that he likes a _theme_ , likes having a core concept that he can spiral stage designs and music videos and merch from, he likes to have a character that he can pull on before he goes on stage but that doesn't mean that he wants to write something where _other people_ will perform his vision. It got easier to visualize when they started filming _Umbrella Academy_ but still, it's only doodles in the back of his notebook, the timeline through from dark to colorful future isn't really real and he'll still answer the question with a laugh and a shake of his head.

**Melody** 109 words, Gerard, 08/02/2021  
Whenever Gerard thinks of Ray, it's like a melody - a pleasing arrangement of thoughts in his head, like one of Ray's gently put-together riffs when he's just noodling around, not for practice, not for writing, just for fun. Sometimes it's just a quiet background noise, other times it's loud and all he can hear, but it's always lovely, never mutates under the pressure of Gerard's brain weasels, even when his meds aren't right. It is, he thinks, like Ray's place in his brain is the mental equivalent of Princess Aurora singing with her birds on her morning stroll, literally magical and drawn in pastel colors, and safe and lovely.

**Band** 136 words, Gerard, 09/01/2021  
Gerard knows his first therapist isn't going to work out, because he doesn't understand that in Gerard's brain, band means _family_ , with all the messiness and love and seeing you at your worst and still being there even when they're pissed at you that family should imply. Until he'd been out in the world a little, seen some of the kids that came to My Chem's shows - clinging onto to each other like life rafts, out of their nests but fiercely protecting each other - he'd have said that family _was_ that unconditional love and support, but he knows better now. He knows better and he can't believe how lucky he's been, having not _one_ family that do, but 3 - the one that he came from, the that one he made, and his band.

**Flute** 161 Words, Ray & Gerard, 10/01/2021  
Ray thinks, perhaps, that they all do better when Gerard is distracted from reading the more fanciful of their press pieces, because they only lead to the more frustrating of Gerard's _great ideas_. Like the time Ray had to remind Gerard that he's not _actually_ a pixie, elf or fae, even though there is undeniably something slightly _ethereal_ about him and the article had several pictures of _fairy prince Gerard_. _That_ article lead to Gerard wanting to learn the flute - Ray is never going to disagree with anyone learning a new instrument, but the flute is difficult and Gerard is impatient in his creativity and Ray was slightly concerned for a while that _he_ was going to have to learn it, to lay down the noise Gerard was hearing in his head, but luckily Ray had another article in his pocket and now he just explain to the guys why they're all being superheroes now.

**Singer** 85 words, Gerard/Ray, 11/01/2021  
Gerard is the singer, obviously, like, he was never going to be anything else, but he really only ever wants to listen to Ray. Ray's voice always _goes_ , always slots in just perfectly, always complimenting, always solid, always sweet and perfect. Gerard wishes that everyone knew, that everyone had a chance to hear Ray's vocal track on each of their songs, but then it's also a secret that he holds tight and revels in and is secretly glad that he doesn't need to share.

**Love Song** 142 words, Gerard/Ray, 12/01/2021  
Ray can appreciate a well written ballad, acknowledges that _I Will Always Love You_ is one of the greatest songs ever written - Dolly is a _Queen_ but that's not his kind of love song. Gerard introduced him to the concept of Love Languages - like if Gee wakes you up at 4 am to tell you his latest idea, or to draw you, or... Any of the other myriad of ways that he can focus 100% of his attention on you in the middle of the night, that's his love language and you're the luckiest motherfucker in the world, so Ray reckons his Love Song, in his Love Language, is when he can't get a hook out of his brain when he thinks of you, and he will play if for you, sing it for you, hum it for you forever.

**Rock and Roll** 177 words, Mikey, 13/01/2021  
Mikey thinks, basically, the rock and roll lifestyle or whatever is over-hyped garbage - like, he's in a fucking successful rock band, so _his_ lifestyle is rock and roll, right? And sure, being on stage - once you're over the paralyzing terror, anyway - is kind of cool and he's met some really fucking rad people (Brian actual fucking May, thank you very much), but, like it's mostly bullshit with bad food, bad smells and not enough sleep (and temptation down a dark road to dark places that Mikey really doesn't ever want to go again). He thinks, really, that the _librarian's_ lifestyle is where it's at, especially the librarian who's in charge of the comics and trades - they get to, like, order new books and recommend them and read them and there's coffee and book groups for babies (so fucking awesome, even if they mostly want to eat the pages) and it's _always in the same place_ and if he didn't love music and his brother and his band so fucking much he'd totally re-train tomorrow.

**Songwriter** 55 words, Mikey & Frank, 14/01/2021  
Frank is _songwriter_ , like, they all are, but Frank... Frank has words and melodies and hooks bubbling up in his brain, bubbling up under his skin all the time. Mikey sometimes thinks that's why Frank's got so many tattoos, that he needs a visual representation of the creative magic that's waiting to burst out.

**Piano** 160 words, Gerard, 16/01/2021  
Piano means soft, quiet, the sound of the bus late, late at night when it's whooshing down the highway to where ever they're going to next and the DVD has gone back to its menu screen and whoever's awake enough has pressed the button on the TV to silence it, but not stopped the disc playing because they don't know where the remote is and they're not going digging around their sleeping band mates. Forte means loud, the sound of the crowd, roaring, waiting for them to come on, almost-deafening, terrifying and exhilarating and amazing and like nothing else on earth, and better, so much better, when his band are there to hear it with him. He loves the inbetweens, the crescendo from sleepy-quiet to screaming, heart-filling loud and the diminuendo - powered now by the tailing off of adrenaline and the puppy-piles of band mates and whatever show they're watching through together, this dynamic sound of their lives on tour.

**Karaoke** 70 words, Gerard 17/01/2021  
He's a singer, karaoke should be a no brainer, but somehow he just... Can't. It's okay when he's singing his songs, their songs, their own arrangements of covers even, but singing someone else's song to a two bit track makes him want to hide or drink or both so when people demand that he sings he says everyone must be sick of listening to him and pushes Ray up instead.

**Radio** 184 words, Gerard 18/01/2021  
Gerard has this little radio in his apartment, it's objectively completely shit - like, the volume and tuning dials are kind of nested one inside the other, so if you turn it off or turn the volume up or down too roughly it loses its tuning, and it is screamingly _pink_ in a way that assaults your eyes first thing in the morning - but it is also kind of magical. He's had it for _years_ , he picked it up in a thrift store when he was still in high school and he's only had to change the batteries, like, twice in all that time, and it always, _always_ tunes in great, no matter how thick the walls are or whatever. Lesser (fancier, more expensive, less pink) radios struggle to find a signal in his piece of shit apartment and hiss and pop or ghost through other voices when he tries to listen to a show, but his tough little magical pink radio tunes in loud and clear, letting the voices talk him through the long dark nights to the brighter, safer mornings.


End file.
